Her Missing Reflection
by i-prefer-the-term-antihero
Summary: Vampires can't see their reflections, and Rapunzel is no exception. What's it like being trapped in a tower for eighteen years, unable to know what you are, or what you look like?


**Notes:**

To be honest, even though I thought it was cool, I wasn't very interested about writing something for the Tangled vampire AU before, especially when it came to Rapunzel, (it seemed to almost go against her character). But when i saw chamiryokuroi's art on tumblr it made me think of her in her tower as a vampire…and I found that more interesting than during Tangled: The Series. The vampire AU could add an intriguing twist to the original movie storyline, and I enjoyed writing something for it, especially because I got to use one of the Tangledtober prompts! I used prompt 24: Mirror. Please forgive any silly grammar/consistency errors! I wrote this rather quickly and didn't have a whole lot of time to edit.

* * *

She does not know what she is.

No one has ever told her, and the mirrors never show her.

Though they show the room, Mother, and Pascal, the mirrors refuse to show Rapunzel. As if she's a forbidden word they cannot speak, a creed they cannot break, and showing her would betray the trust of the gods.

She begs the one in the middle of the main, circular room to tell her its secrets.

It never complies.

Well, it isn't really a secret, is it? Not to anyone else. Just to her. Just to the one who needs to know it most. Or, at least, the one it's about.

Maybe that means she needs to know it least of all. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe we aren't supposed to see ourselves, or know what the mirrors say behind our backs.

The only other person here is Mother. The girl has often asked why the people in her books don't, why Mother herself doesn't, drink blood. She laughs and says that though she is her mother, and though they in the books are people too, they are not quite the same kind.

Rapunzel doesn't quite know what that means, but Mother doesn't explain.

She has never minded being different, she has never had any reason to. But when she asks to go outside, Mother says they will hate her out there, that they will call her monster, that the men will not have pointy teeth like hers.

So she stays.

Her voice frail, soft, and timid, her gaze on the ground, she often asks Mother what she looks like. Mother says she is strong, confident, and beautiful, that she has green eyes, and white teeth, and of course—she runs her hands through it—golden hair. She kisses her head and says she shouldn't worry about things like appearance.

She tries not to.

Then Rapunzel grabs her paintbrushes, and tries to draw what she thinks she looks like, sometimes in her sketchbooks, sometimes on the walls. But Pascal always shakes his head sadly, or tries to smile, though they both know she still got it wrong. And the chameleon's own interpretations are…hard to interpret.

She tries to keep her chin up, to believe that one day she will know. She should after all. One day she'll get it right—she tells herself—one day a mirror will be kind to her.

It's not all bad. She can have fun with her lack of a reflection; some of the many games she plays up in her tower are with her empty space; one of which is making objects—pots and pans, books and plants—and Pascal float.

She asks Mother to bring her back things like antique mirrors, and old dishes, and things that could, and should, reflect her. Mother sighs, but brings them to her anyway.

Maybe, just maybe, the girl thinks, this one will like her.

They never do.

So Mother tells her, again, not to dwell on them.

She throws them out the window.

The girl never sees the pile of shattered glass they make below; daring any intruder to come and face something that doesn't like to see its own reflection.

Or face themselves.

Sometimes she saves one of the mirrors, and paints on the metal itself, sometimes tracing herself, creating an outline she can step into, she can see herself in. Sometimes she keeps one of her favorites in her room, just so she can see a smile in it every day.

Mother tells her she shouldn't ask for the mirrors, that maybe they shouldn't even keep any mirrors in the tower at all. She even tries to break the one in the main room, but when Rapunzel finds her, she shouts, and begs her to stop, and makes her promise to leave it alone.

For some reason, Rapunzel likes that one; talking to it, playing games, thinking _maybe today you will show me._ It's like a stubborn friend to her.

She doesn't want to give up hope that she will one day know herself.

Often, days go by when she doesn't much care, when it doesn't matter if she knows what she looks like or not. It's not like she needs it for everyday life, or that there's anyone else here to look pretty for. She has other things to do, other games to play, other books to read, other muses to paint.

But other days she wonders. Other days the blank space, the emptiness where I should be gnaws away at her, like moths at clothing. Days go by when she paints a smile on those empty mirrors, and leans her forehead onto the cold metal, and does anything but smile; she whispers her pleas this time, (she doesn't ask them loudly, or optimistically), tears forming in her eyes, spilling, smudging the paint. There are days when she can't take it anymore, when she screams, and cries, and rips into pieces the pages of her journals where she drew a girl who is beautiful, and confident, and strong, who has green eyes, and white teeth, and golden hair, and who is_ not her._

One day she will know. One day she will meet someone who wants her to know just how beautiful she is. Who will not tell her that appearance doesn't matter, and that she shouldn't care. Someone who knows how much it means to her, someone who will spend his money (stolen or earned, they can't tell the difference) on something other than himself, and it will be so she can be painted in living color.

And on that same day she will see a lost princess painted on the wall—a girl who has green eyes, and white teeth, and golden hair—and she will wonder for a second that maybe, just maybe—

_Is that me?_

* * *

She does not know what she is.

Quite frankly, neither does Eugene. And he's comfortable with that. The fangs, and the thing about blood, and the whole locked-in-a-tower situation…. he tries not to think of stories, or let the word _vampire _comes to mind.

Because she is something else. The hair, and the bright eyes, the smile, the songs, and the…ahem…frying pan… she is not those stories. The dark legends. She is the brightest thing he has ever met.

And you'd think it'd matter that this girl he…well, he isn't really quite sure how he feels…you really would think it would matter if she was, well…you know. But somehow it doesn't. Or maybe it does, but somehow she is more important than that.

He doesn't remember what he first says when she tells him that she's never seen her reflection—(yeah, that's not a red flag at all, Eugene). Probably something along the lines of "What? I mean everyone has a—" and she steps in front of a shop window, and he probably says, "Oh, yeah, you…you don't have a reflection. That's…I'm not freaking out!"

And he realizes…he wants her to know what she looks like.

He wants her to know the way her hair shimmers in the sunlight, he wants her to count her freckles—(what, no! He hasn't done that!)—he wants her to see how her dimples tug at the corners of her mouth when she smiles, and how her pointy teeth are actually—(he won't admit it)—kinda cute—(no, they're not scary, like one of the thugs at the Snuggly Duckling said)—the way her eyes seem to hold all the green in the entire world, all the green she never saw, and it didn't matter if she saw it, because her world was green because her eyes were the ones that saw it, and painted over the darkened corners. And now her eyes are in his world too.

He tries to draw her, actually—on the back of one of his own botched wanted posters. But it…doesn't exactly work well—(when she comes and asks him what he's working on, he crumples it up and shoves it into his pocket).

As he does so, his fingers find the coins in his pocket (he doesn't remember where he got them from, probably a heist of some sort).

He asks the old artist in the town square how-much-for-a-painting, and can, uh, can-he-get-it-for-less, or do-you-take-apples-as-payment? He also asks if he can capture her appearance from here, perhaps while this whole dance-thing is going on in the town square, so he can keep it a secret.

He's a picky customer, but luckily the painter is old and kind, willing to do this for the sake of a girl who doesn't know herself. Though he mentions something about love, and Eugene brushes it off.

It's all worth it when she sees it. When they're out on the boat before the lanterns arrive, and she gives him a crown, and he gives her her reflection. Her face lights up, and she says his name, hugs him, and and holds it up at different angles.

But then she stops, runs her fingers along the canvas with one hand, and along her own cheek with the other.

"D-Do you like it?"

She looks up at him as if pulled from a reverie, then back down at the painting, and pushes her hair behind her ear.

"To be honest," she laughs a little, "I'm not quite sure."

"Something…wrong with it?"

"Oh, no! Nothing's wrong with I just…" she pauses, looking out across the water, at the castle, and the sunset, then down at the still water that holds…nothing of her. "I've spent my whole life wondering, and now that I know…I don't know what to feel."

He wishes he knew what to say. There isn't exactly a manual for vampire-girl-sees-herself-for-the-first-time. Not that he would read it if there was one. He was always more a fan of fairy tales than instruction manuals.

"Well…that's good!" he blurts out.

"I-It is?"

Crap. Now it's on him to say something inspirational. _Don't screw this up Fitzherbert._

He clears his throat. "Well…uh…not knowing what to feel…" he looks away too, as if he'll find wise words in the sky, "it's good because…" he looks back at her, "because," he gets an idea, "That just means you get to decide how you feel."

She looks at the painting again, and runs her hand through her hair.

"Well then…" there's a second she takes to decide, "I love it!" she grins.

He beams back. "Good! Looks like my work is done here!"

In truth he didn't know what to feel either, but he thinks he's starting to decide too.

* * *

Rapunzel carries the painting back to her tower home like it's as breakable as a mirror itself. Like it's made of glass and gold. She tried to hide it from Mother. When Mother sees it, anger and shock mix behind her eyes. Though she takes the flowers from her hair, and looks at the painting in disdain, she still speaks kindly.

Until Rapunzel realizes. Until she realizes that that girl she saw on the wall was her, that she is not just a pretty girl, nor is she a monster…she is a princess. And she has been lost for far too long.

And gone is Mother's kind tone.

The first thing Mother does after chaining her, is take out her knife, and rip the painting in half. She repeats her words from before, that once sounded so motherly, that she _shouldn't bother thinking about appearance_, and her smile is sly, broad and wicked. Gothel says that the artist didn't even capture her, that she's too pretty, the smile's too wide, the eyes are too green, that she looks too _human._

The Lost Princess could never be a _vampire._

And the word physically knocks her back, but it hammers against the walls in her head too; it echoes until the sound fills the chamber.

Because she knows the stories. Mother never told her what she was, but she did find a book once, a legend or two, and wondered. And Mother neglected to say the myths were about her. Rapunzel knew now she was keeping that information until the proper moment, the moment when it would hurt. She didn't intend to make her comfortable with what she was, to tell her she wasn't a monster, she intended to keep it secret until the word was a blade.

And it was. The word was just one of the many weapons in her arsenal. It was the sharpest today, it and the real blade that severed her reflection, and the heart of the man she had been learning to love.

And later, that mirror Rapunzel had once protected reveals itself to be her friend after all—just not in the way she thought it would. Gothel knocks it over, it shatters, Eugene slices a piece of it through her hair, and it shows Gothel for the monster she is, and she falls into the shattered heap of its fallen brothers below.

With the princess' tears one of blades' affects are rewritten.

But not the other's.

After they both regain some semblance of peace, when she tells him she's the Lost Princess, and he replies that they should tell someone—her real parents probably—she falls to tears again and says, even now, she still can't leave.

Eugene takes the time to tell her she is not a monster. He strings the words together, and he is eloquent in his own little way, and he pulls a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket to show he tried to draw her first. He tells her _this is what I see._

He is not an artist. He has not spent eighteen years becoming friends with brushes, paints, and paper. Her own half-correct sketches look better than his.

Still, she likes his better. Not because it's more accurate, but because the crude excuse for a girl has the brightest smile, with adorable fangs, scribbled hair, that's probably less exaggerated as it seems, and eyes that he obviously tried to draw multiple times, trying to make them just right. This is his heart. It is her reflection in his eyes.

There will come a time where there will be many paintings of her, when her parents, (her real ones), will want to fill the castle with the words _you're beautiful._

But it is Eugene's picture she keeps in her room. She puts it on the vanity that still refuses to show her—the mirrors here are unkind as ever. But this is all she needs.

It is not what all those stuck-up artists think of her, nor is it some perfect recreation of reality. It is what he thinks of her. It is her reflection; he is the mirror who finally spoke back.

Because she learns when people look in the mirror, they don't see themselves as they are. Reflections live, and change, and when people look into them, they see their mistakes, and their flaws, they overlook certain things, and see other things about them accented.

So this is truer as a mirror than the most perfect picture. This is all she needs to know.

Because when she sees it, she knows what she is.


End file.
